…then maybe I could get it all out. Or at least, get enough out that I felt satisfied. But as it is, I wake up feeling hung over from whatever health condition I’m struggling with (whether or not I’ve been on the juice, which I haven’t had a drop of since last Friday), push myself to somehow get through an eight hour day, hit the treadmill for 30 minutes, then return home to sit for awhile and hopefully write something of substance. If I were to win the lottery (which at this point I’ve come to believe is much more likely to happen than getting a proper medical diagnosis, much less find a doctor that takes my symptoms seriously) I’d devote a great deal of my waking life to putting my thoughts to paper (that and a few other things, of course, but this being one of the main ones). I’d find a way to take what I’d like to think are some important if not possibly instrumental thoughts and sharing them with the world.

For example, when I was younger and exploring religions outside of the Judeo-Christian sort I’d grown up with, I pondered and came up with logical, rational, and hard to dispute conclusions. One particular one had to do with that old Biblical goodie, “God created man in His own image.” The accepted interpretation of this, even for Lutherans, which I had grown up as, was that God is essentially an all powerful humanoid who sits on a throne like a king overseeing it all (it’s important to note He had a penis). But as I explored other Faith traditions starting with the journey into Evangelism and then Zen Buddhism, Buddhism, and then other belief systems from around the world (and even local to the Americas), I began to recognize not just the egotistical nature of the literal interpretation, but also that there were other ways to look at it, even ones supported by science. So when I took my physical anthropology class at community college, as I began to see more and more how all living beings on this planet are related and interconnected, I realized that yeah, if there is something called “God”—or to put another way, some conscious being that created the universe—that indeed, S/He/It did create man in S/He/It’s image, but also women, children, cats, dogs, cows, horses, trees, grass, bacteria, viruses, and for God’s sake, the laws of physics. It’s all the “image” of “God”, at least if one were to argue such a thing exists, because everything is, as a matter a simply exiting, beholden to the same natural laws which allow everything to exist and if having been created by anything would be, by the nature of the process of creation, in the image of the artist. To suggest man is somehow more like this “God” is presumptuous and rooted in nothing less than short sighted arrogance no different than the racism that results in one group of people murdering or enslaving another group of people with slightly different physical features; it’s the same psychology, the psychology of narrow, short-sighted tribalism. No wonder I found my first dips into Buddhism so refreshing: while, like any religion, it is steeped in arguably nut-ball superstitions, at its core it’s based on learning how to step away from one’s ego in order to see (accept) reality for what it really is, not what we want or were taught for it to be (so yes, I’ve always found it ironic that while this is a core premise the religion does still embrace an extraordinary number of often culturally based superstitious beliefs). Of course there are some, especially those who are Biblical literalists, that will say, “But that’s what it says,” to which I’d respond, “Okay, it says man was created in God’s image—but since we’re being literal, it doesn’t say anything else is not.” Yes, yes, I repeat myself, but my point here is that at some point I hit on a logical conclusion that I haven’t been able to find a better answer to despite spending thirty years turning over that rock, the kind of conclusion I believe any rational person would come to, and frankly, something I think should be in a book that lists all the things we should have sorted and agreed to by the time we’re twenty five (included in that book are conclusions like, “War is bad”, “Poverty is unnecessary,” “Governments have no inherent right to control your body,” and “Pineapple pizza can actually be enjoyed by people who like it and anyone who says otherwise has a cartoonish view of reality”). And sure, there are some that would say this (the image argument) is all a waste of time because God or whatever Divine Creator does not exist, but in that case it is at the very least an intellectual pursuit with evidence that points towards a single set of factually and scientifically supported answers, which generally speaking, I think is totally fine as it won’t change whether or not I’m dead in the end.

I can’t remember a time, since my birth, where I haven’t been trying to get to the truth of things, digging deeper, trying to find the objective Truth the better explains the nature of reality. I’ve been asking all the big questions: Is there are afterlife? Do ghosts exist? Flying saucers? Big foot? What does it mean to be “Free”? What really happened during the American Revolution? Are there multiple universes? What is an honest person? Is it possible to be completely honest with oneself? Are there truly selfless acts? Do we have soul mates? If there’s a question that’s come to my mind I’ve likely spent an inorbenant amount of time, especially since 2007 when my health struggles have provided more time in bed that I would have liked, to contemplate such things. I want to know the gritty details (and if there’s one thing I’ve learned is that old books and people with agendas rarely hold objective answers that hold up over time [much less over space]). And I’ve also learned there are some things you can’t or may never know. And that’s okay. Maybe Sasquatch exists. Maybe it did but became extinct. Either way, I won’t know by falling in love with a fantasy of what I want to be. Rather, I embrace the, “I don’t know”—and have extraordinary respect for the rare fellow traveler that does the same.

It’s also a source of my frustration. Most people I bump into, whether at work, at the bar, on the street, in my family…it’s like they’ve all come to (often) simple, often culturally based, conclusions to “all the questions.” So that’s one reason I want to write about what’s going though my mind here, because out there, out in the real world, I don’t know anyone who takes the to listen (much less has the courage to have their assumptions challenged). I know that may come across as rather full of myself, but in my defense, as an autistic sort I often just state the facts and the fact is, “I don’t know anyone who…” and between my health, my introverted-autistic nature, my home body lifestyle, etc., I have a much lower likelihood to bump into people that fit the bill. And also to be clear, I’m not sure my ability to do my true thoughts any justice, to articulate them in ways others can consume and understand as I do. Ah, to have the time and devote to exercising those writing muscles, I could only imagine!

Goodnight,

Ashlynn